A Tory peer is to go on trial today accused of dishonestly claiming more than
£11,000 on House of Lords expenses.

Lord Taylor of Warwick is accused of registering an Oxford property lived in by a distant relative as his main residence so that he could claim expenses on his own home in London.

It meant that the 58-year-old barrister was able to bill the taxpayer for overnight subsistence and mileage only available to those living outside London, when he actually lived in capital, it is alleged.

The peer, whose full name is full name John David Beckett Taylor, faces six counts of false accounting under the 1968 Theft Act for claims amounting to £11,277 between 2006 and 2007. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

His trial is to begin this morning at Southwark Crown Court.

Lord Taylor became the first black Conservative peer when he was appointed to the Lords in 1996.

But questions were asked about his expenses when allegations were made in December 2009 that he had registered a house in Oxford belonging to the partner of his stepbrother's son, without his knowledge or consent.

Declaring the property owned by Tristram Wyatt, an academic who lives with Lord Taylor's step-nephew Robert Taylor, as his primary residence, allegedly would have enabled him to claim subsistence expenses while staying in a house he owned in Ealing, west London.

When questions were first raised about the claims, he issued a statement saying that his main home was a property in which his late mother Enid had lived.

But it was then alleged that this house, in Solihull, West Midlands, had been sold in 2001, shortly before Mrs Taylor's death, but that the peer's claims had continued until 2007.

It was subsequently alleged that the peer had registered a home owned by Mr Wyatt, a zoologist, which he shared with Mr Taylor, a photographer, as his principle residence for the purposes of his expenses.

Earlier this month David Chaytor, the former Labour MP, was jailed for 18 months for falsifying his expenses claims.

Last week Eric Illsley, the Labour MP for Barnsley, was warned he also faced jail after pleading guilty to dishonestly claiming more than £14,000 in expenses.